Lead singer of the Cranberries whose startling, steely voice enchanted audiences on hits such as Linger and Zombie‘I have a lot of secrets about my childhood [but they] are just for me,” Dolores O’Riordan told the Guardian in 1995. She and her Limerick rock quartet, the Cranberries, were then at the peak of their success, well on the way to selling 40m albums, and O’Riordan was one of the highest profile female singers in the English-speaking world. It was nearly 20 years later that she revealed that she had been abused for four years from the age of eight by someone close to her family. By her own account, O’Riordan, who has died aged 46 of a cause as yet unknown, spent most of her adult life seeking a balance between depression and anorexia, and the rewards of great professional success.She was 21 when the Cranberries reached the US Top 10 with their second single, Linger, which established them as a headline act there. In the UK, the influential music press decreed them unexcitingly traditional, but the public were enchanted by the group’s melodies, and especially by O’Riordan’s haunting voice; their debut album topped the British chart and the next three were Top 10 hits. It was a similar story in the rest of Europe and Australia. O’Riordan became a symbol of pride for both Ireland and the Irish diaspora. Continue reading…
Via: Dolores O’Riordan obituary
Categories: English News